{"id":2608,"date":"2011-12-25T14:06:51","date_gmt":"2011-12-25T22:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=2608"},"modified":"2011-12-25T19:52:29","modified_gmt":"2011-12-26T03:52:29","slug":"everything-i-needed-to-know-about-christmas-i-learned-from-my-grandma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=2608","title":{"rendered":"Everything I Needed to Know About Christmas I Learned From My Grandma"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Baptists are never supposed to think about this.<\/p><\/div>\n

Christmas in a household of professional Baptists has always been a time to think about the joys of giving.\u00a0 In my particular case this has proven to be a double-edged sword, the flip side being that it is not<\/em> a time to think about \u201cgetting\u201d.\u00a0 Devoting any neurons to the contemplation of what one might get<\/em> for Christmas, you see, is unChristian; we are supposed to be concerned entirely with the selflessness of giving unto others, not whether you\u2019re going to get that Captain Scarlet SPV dinky toy you covet.\u00a0 (I was never entirely sure how to reconcile this virtue of selflessness<\/em> riff with the fact that the whole point of being charitable was to get into heaven while the Rosenbergs down the street ended up in The Other Place, but there you go.)<\/p>\n

It was considered bad form in the Watts household to show any interest at all in whatever swag you<\/em> might accumulate on the 25th<\/sup>.\u00a0 On the off-chance that someone asked you what you wanted for Christmas, you were honor-bound to keep silent \u2014 or at the very least to shrug off the question with a disclaimer along the lines of I haven\u2019t thought about it, really<\/em>.\u00a0 By the time I hit adolescence I\u2019d figured out how to game this system (just give everyone a hand-made card telling them that \u201cIn honor of Christ\u2019s birth I have made a donation to Unicef in your name\u201d \u2014nobody was ever crass enough to ask for a receipt).\u00a0 But even that conceptual breakthrough didn\u2019t stop Christmas mornings from being generally grim affairs in which people sat around with fixed and glassy smiles, thanking each other for gifts they obviously hated, but which they could hardly complain about because after all, they\u2019d never told anyone what they wanted.\u00a0 The gifts bestowed upon me<\/em> during my childhood included pyjamas, an economy-sized roll of pink serrated hair tape, and a set of TV tables (which, as you all know, is the absolute fucking dream <\/em>of every 11-year-old boy).<\/p>\n

But the best gift I ever<\/em> got was at the hands of my paternal grandmother, Avis Watts, may Ceiling Cat devour her soul.<\/p>\n

Avis was an absolute master at economy.\u00a0 For example, since my birthday falls within a month of Christmas, she would frequently send me a single gift intended to cover both occasions. On the occasion of which I speak\u2014 my thirteenth birthday, I think it was \u2014 she even economised on the card.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t notice that at first: I tore the wrapping off the box and extracted a flat leather billfold from within, and \u2014 thinking that perhaps there might be some money inside (what else would you put in a billfold, hmmm?) \u2014 I spread its flaps wide enough for a little card to fall out of the spot where a more generous soul might have stuck a twenty.<\/p>\n

It was not a Christmas card.\u00a0 It was not a birthday card.\u00a0 It was an invitation to a cocktail party: \u00a0at least, it was festooned with cartoon pink elephants and martini glasses beneath the cheery inscription<\/p>\n

HOPE YOU CAN MAKE IT!<\/p>\n

Immediately beneath this, Grandma had added in ball-point pen:<\/p>\n

To Christmas and your birthday!<\/p>\n

I opened the card and read the note within:<\/p>\n

Dear Peter,<\/em><\/p>\n

Somebody gave me this billfold, but I already have a billfold so I thought you might like it for Christmas and your birthday.\u00a0 Happy birthday!<\/em><\/p>\n

Love, Grandma<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

P.S. Please tell your father that Uncle Ernie has died.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had already learned a great deal about Christmas during the preceding twelve years.\u00a0 What Avis taught me was a valuable lesson about family, and it was this:\u00a0 they suck.<\/p>\n

It was a lesson that has stood the test of time across all the decades between then and now.\u00a0 Many have been the relationships I\u2019ve co-piloted from blast-off to burn-out; many the collateral families thrust upon me like disapproving and destabilizing ballast mid-flight, my coerced attendance at their interminable Christmas and Thanksgiving get-togethers only serving to reinforce my conviction to never have one of my own (and, doubtless, their own conviction that their daughter could do so<\/em> much better). The lesson I learned at my grandmother\u2019s knee has always stood me in good stead.<\/p>\n

Until now.<\/p>\n

Now, oddly, I have encountered a family that actually, well, doesn\u2019t<\/em> exactly suck.\u00a0 In fact, it doesn\u2019t suck at all. It took a while to figure that out.\u00a0 They had to patiently lure me close in small stages, as though bribing a feral and skittish cat with small helpings of tuna.\u00a0 Suddenly I was curled up at the hearth and there wasn\u2019t a fundamentalist Catholic or a Burlington banker or a bipolar whack-job anywhere in sight. \u00a0So, reluctantly, it is time to put my grandmother\u2019s lesson away, to set it free, to bequeath it to others who might still find it useful.<\/p>\n

I bequeath it to you.\u00a0 Treat it well. Heed its wisdom; it is right so much more often than wrong.\u00a0 In fact, it may truer now than ever, since I might just have snatched up the last available kick-ass family on the planet.<\/p>\n

Most families suck.\u00a0 Especially this time of year.\u00a0 It is okay to admit that; it is okay to tell them to their faces.\u00a0 Have a couple of drinks first:\u00a0 that\u2019ll make it easier.<\/p>\n

Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas in a household of professional Baptists has always been a time to think about the joys of giving.\u00a0 In my particular case this has proven to be a double-edged sword, the flip side being that it is not a time to think about \u201cgetting\u201d.\u00a0 Devoting any neurons to the contemplation of what one might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2608"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2617,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2608\/revisions\/2617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}